According to the public accounts committee, the cost to decommission UK’s nuclear power stations has reached €23.5 billion and will likely increase.
Owned by EDF Energy, the 7 power stations provide the majority of nuclear power-generated electricity which supplies 16% of the country’s energy. To safely decommission the seven nuclear power stations and their gas-cooled reactors the government has been looking at taxpayers for funds. Because of failures in the government’s initial strategy to fund the project, an additional €10.7 billion have been produced by taxpayers in just the past two years.
The facilities are approaching the end of their production life and are arranged to stop producing electricity before the end of the decade. Once EDF removes all of the used fuel from the reactor’s core and cooling ponds the government will bear the responsibility of finishing the decommissioning. The government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will be handling these seven stations as well as several other older reactors.
The cost depends heavily on how much time it takes to carry out the decommissioning and defuelling processes. All parties involved will need to be ready to work together and avoid any delays. Concerns have been raised over whether the NDA will be able to focus on these 7 along with the other decommissions.
Latest estimates report that it will be another 120 years and a total of €132 billion from UK taxpayers before all of the country’s nuclear sites can close. Although Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised to build eight new nuclear power sites in eight years, this doesn’t seem possible as the country is lacking storage space for nuclear waste.
As time passes it becomes more of a risk to decommission these plants, as conditions worsen costs continue to increase the pressure rises for the government as well as taxpayers.
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